Inventory of the Lepidoptera Larvae, their Parasitoids, and their Gut Microbes of a Costa Rican Tropical Dry Forest, Cloud Forest, and Rainforest

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This project will inventory all species of macrocaterpillars living in the 110,000 ha of tropical dry forest and its contiguous rain forest and cloud forest in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica. Research will be focused on identification and classification of caterpillar speciesand their associated adult life forms, their food plant relationships, their species of parasitoids (tachinid flies, parasitic wasps, nematodes, entomopathogenic fungi), their gut microbiota, and the creation of on-line databanks of images and data associated with species and collecting localities. The project is designed to discover, rear, photograph, and characterize caterpillars of at least another 1000 species of currently unknown macrocaterpillars (Lepidoptera exclusive of leaf miners) to yield approximately 3,000 species known and yet undiscovered for the region. In addition, the project will maintain and enlarge the collection of caterpillar and parasitoid voucher material, publish by web-based and traditional methods identification keys, species descriptions, and natural history information. This project is designed as a Long-term Large-scale Inventory and is jointly sponsored by the Division of Environmental Biology and the Division of International Programs.